


Directions

by underwater_owl



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BDSM, Bisexuality, Choking, F/M, M/M, Prostitution, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Sex Work, Tony is an ass, bruce is resourceful, consensual non-monogamy, safewords are important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:19:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underwater_owl/pseuds/underwater_owl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Iron Man, pre-Hulk.  A post-incident Bruce Banner needs to cross the Arizona border, is on the run, IDless, looking for anonymous cash in a hurry.  Tony Stark is in town.  A prostitution AU where Bruce is not really a prostitute and Tony gets off on that fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a tiny bit incomplete, but it was one of those 'now or never' postings, and I like it well enough... and really like the idea of the next chapter, so here we go!

Here’s how it happens.

They meet in Arizona, on a hot, sunbaked afternoon. Tony is out and about in the coolest suit he owns, because the internet is down in his hotel and there’s no reception thanks to the canyon they’re oh so helpfully staying in, and anyways, he needs to find a bar in this town that isn’t a total shithole (impossible.)

It’s ninety fucking thousand degrees outside, and his sunglasses keep wanting to slip down the bridge of his nose. In a few years he’ll hate the desert for different, Afghanistan related reasons, but this is before all that, and even though he’s hot he’s still happy, restless, ready for trouble.

He pulls over, side of the road, up to a curb, to where men stand about waiting for work. His car sends a couple of them back into the shadows; unusual can mean _unsafe,_ in the life of a migrant and undocumented worker, and men in cars like Tony’s don’t come through here all that often. Frowning in consternation, he leans across the seat, calls out the passenger side window;

“Hey!”

More scattering. A few men stay resolutely still, smoking against the building wall, staring at him with flat, hostile eyes. A few trade muttered words; one steps forward. He has to bend down a little to see and speak into Tony’s lowslung indulgence of a car. One hand braces himself up against the door, and Tony opens his mouth to tell him not to touch the paint, but stops.

Brown curls, serious eyes, a soft mouth and a sunburned nose. Dirt under the fingernails, a pair of glasses in the breast pocket of his shirt, and fuck, this guy does something electric to him. He draws in a shaky breath, and is interrupted by a quiet, surprised;

“Mister Stark.”

It isn’t that unusual to be recognized. In fact, it would be much more startling to go somewhere and be at all anonymous. Still, he doesn’t expect to hear his name in that tone, in that voice. Startled, he goes to his comfort zone;

“Hey, handsome, you wouldn’t happen to know where a man could get a drink around here?”

The stranger blinks once, licks his bottom lip, which Tony notices is cracked, and thinks about his answer. So he keeps talking;

“Seriously, this isn’t a dry township is it? Because if I can’t find something fun to do anytime soon I’m going to have to resort to hookers and blow, and I try not to get into the hard stuff before four pm.”

If this affronts the man at his window, there’s no way of knowing it. His expression betrays nothing but a calm thoughtfulness. In the exact same tone as before, like he’s directing a lost colleague to a different conference room, he tells him;

“There are no dry townships in Arizona. It’s prohibited to enact that sort of legislation. But since it is noon on a Monday, I don’t really know if I can help you.”

Tony, who is so fucking hooked it isn’t funny, leans open and cracks the door handle, gives it as much as a push as he can, sending it open an inch or two. As is so often the case, the rest unfolds itself.

“Robert.” The man supplies, as he slips down into the passenger seat, closes the door, fastens his seatbelt with deliberate care. He has dust all over him; Tony wrinkles his nose, mentally reminds himself to have the upholstery cleaned later. He drums his fingertips on his knee, doesn’t seem to realize that Tony hadn’t asked his name. Says; “Drive.”

The other workers on the corner watch them go, without discernible reaction, without any particular curiosity. It’s strange, but not so strange, and it isn’t really their problem.

  
Tony watches Robert out of the corner of one eye, and for a few seconds he thinks the man will go ahead and give him directions to a bar. His hands still, and fold into his lap, then lift up and check that he still has his glasses, before folding again. He doesn’t seem to have anything else in his pockets. His hands have callouses, from farm or maybe factory work. He’s younger than Tony, he’s willing to bet, and tired, but not in the way that pros usually are.

  
It’s somehow startling when he goes ahead and lays it out, precise and without pretense;

“Do you have cash on you?”

Tony smirks, and hangs the right that will take them back to his hotel.

They negotiate the price on the trip, Robert’s fingers flickering occasionally towards the car door, like he wants to bolt, and eventually settle on something much higher than you’d normally pay a street worker, but Tony can’t bring himself to care. ‘Condoms mandatory,’ Robert informs him, with a little pinch of seriousness between his eyebrows and a stern, stern expression, and Tony nods along and cops a feel on the way through the lobby, just to watch him go red under the scrutiny of the implacable staff, who have seen it all before.

“And I hope you weren’t serious about the blow.” He adds, on his way into Tony’s suite. He sucks an appreciative breath between his teeth at the room, and turns to face him, as Tony shuts the door behind them.

He’s so transparently not a hooker that Tony almost takes pity on him, but who is he to judge? Robert doesn’t ask to see the two hundred up front, and comes in for a nervous kiss without waiting to be asked, and sinks unceremoniously to his knees before Tony is really done kissing him, rhythm all wrong. It shouldn’t do it for him, but it does, it really fucking does.

They get into the shower together, because the squeamish part of his brain can’t get past the slight texture of dirt on Robert’s skin, the grit and tack in that soft hair, and Tony watches the heat and humiliation in those pretty brown eyes as he showers him down, scrubs him with soap.

“It’s a sex thing for me,” he says, archly, spinning him and putting him up against the wall, watching the muscles in his back and shoulders bunch as he reaches up to brace himself. Tony takes him by the hip with one hand, and holds the other against the back of his head, pulling him into a deep arch and appreciating the little noise that rips out of him.

He’s developing a new fetish pretty quickly. ‘Inexperienced sex worker humiliation kink,’ he imagines googling later, as he slicks his fingers with soap. Actually, Tony has always taken a delight in the humiliation of others, the sexwork and inexperience parts are purely incidental. But since he’s equally invested in control, he finishes lathering his fingers and wraps them around his new little friend’s cock.

Robert comes apart in a matter of seconds, more quickly than he’d expected. It’s partially that Tony’s reputation is very well-founded, that he’s criminally good with his hands, and seems also to partially be touch-starvation, given how he shivers and leans back. Tony jacks him off right there in the shower, savouring the surprised little sounds he makes throughout, and only steps back when a first exploring finger clues him in that they’re going to need lube, not soap, for this.

He looks like something out of eighties gay porn, more body hair than Tony has seen on a man in what feels like years, to be honest- not that he’s all that hairy, actually, just that Tony tops pretty much exclusively and his bottoms are usually shaved and waxed and chiseled. Robert is soft and furred and wet and human, arching and squirming against the tiles and on Tony’s hand, and needs to be opened up with one, two, and then three fingers.

“Feel like I’m seducing my prom date,” Tony tells him, but it’s fun in a nostalgic sort of way, watching him flush and pant, and anyways, a few seconds later he comes all over himself and the bathroom wall, and tries to fall to his knees. Immensely gratified, Tony pins him up against the tile while he catches his breath, and then pushes him out towards the bedroom. Robert escapes his arms, leans back, and turns the water off, and Tony tells him;

“Well, aren’t you just the cutest little conservationalist?” as he pushes him down into a sprawl on the bed, before diving on top of him.

“Well, I mean, there’s no sense wasting-“ he starts to correct, and then something about the expression on Tony’s face shuts him up.

“So. Now that we’ve broken the ice” Tony starts, sinking down to straddle his hips, pinning him, watching him. “If I were to ask to tie you up, would you be into that?”

Something eager passes over Robert’s face, and then something shrewd, and Tony watches him consider, and then negotiate;

“Fifty extra.”

Yeah, not a sex worker, Tony evaluates silently. Probably kinky, though, he thinks, when he reaches up to hold his wrists down, pinning them to either side of his head, feeling Robert start to get hard again underneath him.

Held down, and then eventually tied down with Tony’s belt, Robert twitches and squirms and doesn’t seem to be faking, to even be capable of faking anything, which is gratifying in a way that Tony can’t quite wrap his head around.

“And if I wanted to spank you?”

Something flits across his face. Tony knows, before he answers, that it’s going to be a,

“Red.”

But getting a safeword out of him is worth it, and confirmation that he knows what he’s doing at least to this extent. Tony nods, and offers instead;

“Choking?”

Another expression, there again, gone again, but Tony has to wonder if he knows how transparent he is, when he answers;

“Green. Start light, though.”

So Tony wraps his hands around his neck as a warm and friendly hello, before he sinks down overtop of him and between his thighs. ‘Light’ is all well and good, except with each press of his cock, Robert chants _more, more, more,_ and pushes up against his hand, until Tony gives in and just squeezes. The sound it earns him is something between a scream and a sob, followed by a babble of encouragement and enthusiastic consent, and he gives in and fucks him and chokes him until his eyes roll back.

So close after a first orgasm, it takes the sex, plus four of Tony’s fingers in him afterwards while a hand stays wrapped around his throat, ruthlessly pressing harder, deeper, while his hips rock helplessly in time. Tony is very familiar with the look of someone going to pieces and loving it, and knows how to push. He likes this, likes taking him unabashedly, likes fucking them for as long as it takes. With the right angle, the right purr in his ear, Robert eventually comes for him again.

Now the fun starts.

After the second orgasm, it’s a lot more difficult. He’s come already, so it’s three fingers back inside him, and he really regrets the condom right now, but chants to him nonetheless, about how wet he is, how fucked, how he can feel how messy he is. Tears slide down Robert’s temples, while Tony works him to tortured overstimulation. He ends up screaming, begging, pleading. He doesn’t safeword. He blacks out briefly when he comes.

Afterwards, because Tony isn’t a total asshole and knows subspace when he sees it, he leaves the belt on his wrists, and strokes his curls. He runs a thumb along that bottom lip and palms idly at his soft cock, which provokes purrs and whimpers respectively, and only really lets him up for air when the sky has turned midnight blue.

Getting into his clothes, Robert looks positively fucked, and like he might have forgotten about the money. Tony stops him at the door, tucks four crisp one hundred dollar bills into his pants pocket, and gives him another appreciative grope.

“Thanks for the directions. You sure are the little navigator that could.”

He tells him, giving him an approving kiss on the corner of the mouth. Offers;

“If you’re looking for a regular, I’d-“

But Robert cuts him off right away, hands slipping gingerly up to rest around him, the first embrace he’s really reciprocated all night.

“I think we both know you’re never going to hear from me again.”

And in a town like this, so close to the border, Tony can think up a few ideas as to why. So he holds on to him for a second, and if it’s a little more sincere than he’d normally like to get, well, that’s the advantage of a prostitute, isn’t it? No one has to know.

“You were everything I imagined.” Robert says, peculiar, and suddenly a whole different person. It makes Tony thinks he never really had a good read of him to begin with. “And I really admire you. I wish you could have known me under better circumstances, and I know you won’t believe me when I say this, but I think you might have admired me too.”

A few years in the future, this might have sunk in, but even though something stirs in Tony at the whatever-it-is in his voice, that sort of empathy and moral engagement is right now a little too much to ask. He smirks, and they move past it.

Doctor Robert ‘Bruce’ Banner slips off into the night, ready to cross the border, cash in pocket, and Tony goes to get the scotch from the hotel minibar, each expecting never to see the other again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper and Tony discuss Tony's new teammates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for those who took the time to review! I absolutely couldn't resist writing more of this, and am deciding to turn it into a chaptered fic. This one is a little shorter than the last, but is really more of an interlude.

Tony is in the tower with Pepper when he realizes. She’s in the jean shorts that make his head turn so fast he risks whiplash, and has her long, freckled legs wrapped around him while he reads briefings in preparation for his meeting with SHIELD tomorrow. Captain America coming out of the ocean, the testing records of the Tesseract, the profile of the missing agent, Barton…

And Doctor Robert Bruce Banner, smiling in his faculty ID, then thirty pounds lighter and through a Culver security camera, haunted and on the run. Again, healthier and calm, disembarking a truck full of people in Nepal. The last photo looks the most like the man Tony remembers from the hotel. It’s been years, but the solemnity and poise of the man come right back.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

He says, flicking his fingers so Jarvis brings the picture up in full size, big enough that the dark smudges of Banner’s eyelashes pixelate ever so slightly. The slight uptick in the corner of his mouth, the wry smile, confirm for him what really doesn’t need confirming.

Pepper kisses his shoulder, making a questioning sound, and Tony clears his throat and decides what to say. 

“I’ve met him.”

Her lips graze over his shoulder, her fingers slide up his chest. She isn’t shy of the reactor any more, and his heart twists. He loves her madly for it.

“Not in an academic setting- remember that thing I had in Rio Rico?”

“Nogales.” Pepper corrects him, but he feels her nod.

“He was there. It would have been right after he went on the run- he was pretty clearly into some sort of trouble. I was bored one day and I met him on the street, picked him up for a little fun.”

Pepper makes a sound, and cues to the next picture. Banner is smiling in this one, weary, but content, in a too-large jacket with a satchel hanging off his shoulder. _Medical care to locals_ the SHIELD file tells him, text scrolling down a side panel, and Tony makes a snap decision, clarifies.

“I think he would have done just about anything for a shower and a hot meal, but- we had some fun together. At least, I think we did, if he was in that kind of a bind it’s hard to know.”

He remembers dizzy trust, Robert staggering into him ever so slightly on the trip between the bedroom and the bathroom. He remembers his heaving breaths in the half-dark, chasing the taste of his tears hungrily as he’d fought against the belt.

Pepper interrupts his reverie, chin resting on his shoulder, voice lifting slightly in the tone he knows means that she’s repeating herself for him, that he’d missed her the first time around.

“Tony. Is it going to be weird seeing him, again?” Which strikes him as a tactful evasion, so he waits a second, and she obligingly fills in; “Is he going to be pissed that you fucked and chucked him?”

There it is. He smiles, rests a hand on her knee, and answers;

“No.” But- “Maybe. I mean, he might not even recognize-“

She scoffs, and right, he had definitely known who it was he was sleeping with.

“I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. He was the one who got up to leave. I asked him if he wanted to do it again sometime, and he let me know that wouldn’t be possible. I’m pretty sure he was there to get out of the States.”

“That makes sense,” Pepper admits, lifting a hand up. Her nimble fingers sort through files, pull up the section on Banner in South America, something about a soda bottling factory being destroyed. “If he made his way down there through backwater channels and on foot…”

You’d need cash to pull that off, Tony thinks, and suddenly has to wonder if this might not be awkward after all. If Banner hadn’t wanted to sleep with him, and had strictly needed the money, he would probably not have the best impression of Tony in the world. Reading the casualty list attributed to the alternate, greener form, Tony can see how that would feel a lot like a gun to the head. He sucks a breath between his teeth, and feels an uncomfortable twinge of something like guilt in his chest.

“What?” Pepper asks, because she knows him better than anyone, “Tony?”

“I’m just… enjoying another present from past-Tony to future-Tony.”

It isn’t the first time consequences of his misspent youth (and adulthood, and early middle age) have come to catch up with him, and it won’t be the last. And maybe it won’t be that bad, even, he can bring to mind details of an embrace by the hotel room door.

“You’re worried you won’t be able to work together?”

That’s a concern… but then, watching Banner’s photo, he realizes that it really isn’t. If lives hang in the balance, Banner is apparently a man who will get things done. Jarvis, who seems to know how to subtly recriminate Tony these days without saying a word, pulls up footage of the green creature in Harlem.

“I don’t think so. I mean, for one thing, we’d know right away if he were going to get angry.”

Pepper never laughs at jokes that potentially involve Tony being killed, he remembers, as she goes still, and then begins to disentangle herself from around him. He glances over his shoulder at her, twisting slightly, so they’re face to face.

“I’m worried I- I mean, for context, Pep, I’ve been reading this guys’ work since Caltech. He’s not really in my field but some of his discoveries revolutionized, well… everything. Without him, _this,_ ” tapping his chest, the clink of glass, “I’m not going to say it would have been impossible, but thanks to him it definitely became a whole lot more probable. Not so much probable as ‘safe to be inside a human body,’ that’s his area, radiation and biology, but...”

Pepper rests a hand overtop of his, cutting him off before he can veer too far into the science, and synthesizes;

“You’re worried that you may have lost his respect.”

Tony shivers, and looks at her, and wonders when on earth a little thing like someone else’s respect started mattering to him. He definitely remembers the hallway now, Robert murmuring about meeting under different circumstances, and yes. She’s absolutely right.

“I'm going to be totally honest with you, Pep. There's things about this one I can't tell you.” Honesty is a policy with them, and one he values, but there's something about this... he knows, knows without needing to ask, that the scientist on the screen would not want this getting out about him. Pepper isn't 'getting out,' exactly, but even though Tony trusts her, Banner doesn't, so and it's his reputation on the line so that completely isn't Tony's call to make. “Nothing dangerous, just stuff about him- his condition, his work, that I think he deserves for people not to know.”

He's never going to lie to her, if he can help it, and that's true because she has the maturity and grace to _accept_ it, when he runs into stuff like that. She nods, thinks for a few moments, and doesn't push, pry, or even ask.

Then, because she’s the love of his life, the one for him, she takes a soft breath and assesses;

“You might want to sleep with him again.”

This is touchy territory, for Tony, more than it is for Pepper. He doesn’t want to ‘step out’ on her, doesn’t like what the gossip rags would do if they were found out, and doesn’t one hundred percent buy it when she tells him that in a consenting relationship, with clear boundaries and mutual respect, with barrier protection and STI testing, negotiated non-monogamy isn’t the worst thing in the world…

But he thinks about Banner, and the man twisting in the hotel sheets, screaming until a neighbour had banged furiously on the bedroom wall, then muffling himself by biting the tail of Tony's belt. He'd left teeth imprints in the leather, Tony had eventually had to throw the thing out.

Would he?

“Not for a while.” Ultimately, because. “There’s bigger stuff going on right now than getting into someone’s pants, even his- and honestly, I don’t know if I want to be his fuckbuddy, you know?”

Pepper smiles at him, and his heart surges. He likes the way she looks when she’s feeling proud of him. Her eyes flick back to Banner, and he can see her contemplating him, and then contemplating him and Tony. The non-monogamy _does_ work for her, especially when it comes to Tony’s bisexuality. Partially because he’s much more discreet in that respect, mostly because she likes the stories he comes back with. 

She looks sly and beautiful and warm, and it hits him all of a sudden that if this thing with the Tesseract is bad, then he might not see her for a few weeks. He leans in, and kisses her abruptly, and waves to dismiss his notes for the time being.

_“Sir, might I remind you that Agent Coulson-”_

Jarvis starts to scold them, and Tony is busy undoing the fly of Pepper’s shorts with his mouth, while she laughs and covers her face with her hands, calling out a breathless;

“Thank you, Jarvis, that’ll be all!”

It isn’t that either of them is going to ignore their work for the night. Tony will still finish his briefings, Pepper will still pack. But it doesn’t hurt to steal a few minutes together before the action begins.


	3. Chapter 3

_“It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.”_

Never let it be said that Tony did things by halves. But the prospect of meeting Banner again had been a little daunting, considering all of the _considering_ that had gone into it, and that was the best line he could come up with that delivered the correct amount of insouciance and friendliness, and ‘look, I’m not going to out you as a part time gay prostitute!’

“Thanks,” Banner answers, hands tucked protectively in at his sides, and Tony is prepared to call that an almost-success. It sounds more wary than friendly, but at least it’s well out of the realm of outright hostility.

Small mercies.

They end up paired in a lab together, which couldn’t have worked out any better if Tony had planned it himself. They make polite conversation with Romanov on the way there. Well, Banner does, and Tony makes rather impolite conversation. He has a bit of a grudge against anyone who stabs him in the neck with a needle at any point in their working relationship. But they make it to the SHIELD lab without incident, and Romanov-Rushman-whoever bids them a polite goodbye and good luck.

It leaves them facing each other in the little space, and Tony realizes something completely frustrating and absolutely hysterical. Bruce opens his mouth to talk, and he cuts him off, sharply;

“Don’t say anything proprietary, Doc. I have it on good authority that they bug these places, audio and video from pretty much every possible angle. Discuss the wrong precocious invention in SHIELD headquarters and you jumpstart the invention of the next cellphone generation.”

Banner’s eyebrows lift as he considers this, mouth pursing into something amused, and totally grateful. Tony’s heart gives a lurch.

“That seems like a problem that’s likely to affect you more than me, Mister Stark. My work isn’t all that patentable, I certainly wouldn’t describe most of what I do as lucrative.”

Tony nods, absently, wondering if it’s an accident that they’re discussing money already, and shrugs.

“We could change that. We’ll get you in touch with my R&D people when this has all blown over. And call me Tony.”

“Okay, Tony.” He seems to consider this for a second, then decides; “You can call me Bruce.”

Not Robert, then. Tony supposes that would make sense, using an unlikely name while on the run. He nods, and watches him, taking in the uncertain slant of his shoulders, the steel in his expression. Banner- Bruce- is expecting for this to go wrong, has the look on his face of a man who expects to be turned on, turned in, judged, hurt or humiliated in the near future.

Tony supposes he’ll just have to go about proving him wrong. When did his life take this turn for the morally appropriate?

“But seriously,” Tony says, “huge fan of your work. Have been for years. I think I first read your stuff in the eighties.”

Banner lifts a delicate eyebrow, _really_ , because he would have been graduating back then, but Tony nods sincerely. Respect. Definitely respect.

And then he goes ahead and electrocutes him in the side with a piece of lab equipment.

What Steve doesn’t get, when he comes in objecting strenuously, and what Tony certainly isn’t going to explain to him, is that it’s a form of flirtation. Banner is actually smiling now, watching Tony like he’s amazed anyone would dare. Tony waggles his eyebrows back at him, in the brief seconds while Steve is looking at Banner, because he wants to tie Banner down and make him suck on that probe before he takes it to rather delicate parts of his body.

Banner flushes scarlet, and Tony starts fighting with Steve so he doesn’t notice, but can’t bring himself to feel too sorry about that.

\--

The thing about it is, they are professionals, the work does take precedence. If it didn’t, Tony would have disabled the bugs by now and thrown Banner over a lab table, or maybe been responsible and had a conversation with him and asked for forgiveness. Probably the former, knowing him.

But they don’t. They track radiation together and compile data and look for patterns, and do the work. Doctor Banner is a brilliant scientist, of a very different sort than Tony. Tony is all wild leaps of ingenuity, project development, applicability and innovation. He coordinates the technology that will help them search, synchs them, writes for them a program that’ll alert them the moment certain parameters are met.

Banner, on the other hand, is all meticulous rigour. He doesn’t have Tony’s flare for invention, but he can read exact degradation sequences of various polymers out from a combination of memory and interpretation, counting them out the way Tony might be able to list primes. Tony sketches out the rough theory for how something _should_ work, and Banner has the math filled in, fleshing out his work, before Tony can bother to slow down to check the equations.

It’s a joy. True, addictive, incredible intellectual collaboration, and Tony feels himself wiring up, wanting to race, wanting to get in the suit and _go._

Except for that, too, Banner is a balm. After a particularly excited gesticulation sends a pad falling off a lab table, Banner reaches out and takes Tony’s hand, without looking up from the data displayed in front of them. 

“One sec, don’t…”

Instructing him, while he holds Tony’s hand down to the table, keeping him still while he focuses. Tony cranes over to see what Banner needs him to keep quiet for, but is distracted by the warmth of his thumb at his wrist, the tap of Banner’s index finger against his palm.

The rather deliberate tap, in fact. ... .- -. -.- ..., Tony mentally translates what he catches, _h-a-n-k-s._ Thanks.

He taps back;

_w-i-l-l-b-e-d-i-s-c-r-e-t-e_

Banner’s thumb brushes over his wrist, but his hand draws away, and Tony wonders if it was a mistake to bring it up.

He changes the topic to Loki.

“What he's got is an acme dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does.”

Banner glances up him, and pushes his chair away, going to go back to check on a few calculations that blatantly don’t need checking on.

“And I'll read all about it.”

There’s something of defeatism in his voice, that Tony frankly doesn’t like the sound of.

“Or you'll be suiting up like the rest of us.”

Is it a worse idea to bring up the other guy than it is to bring up how they met? Probably, but Tony has never really believed in leaving sleeping dogs to lie. And from what he’s seen of Banner, the man likes to lean into the hits, metaphorical and otherwise. He’s glad to talk about it, glad to be able to warn him;

“Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare.”

There is nothing particularly exposed about him right now, though Tony can certainly remember a time when that wasn’t the case. Banner has grown up in the intervening years, in a way that Tony had in Afghanistan. No, more than that, in a way that has closed him off in serious ways that Tony doesn’t really like the look of.

He wonders what other moral compromises Bruce had had to make in his years on the run. Then, with a lurch, wonders how much of this is his fault. 

Tony’s sense of empathy is rusty, disused, but he tries to picture it. Being in the cave and deciding to spread his legs to keep the weapons technology out of the wrong hands. Because that’s what had happened, hadn’t it? Banner had been scared of potential capture, militarization, probably experimentation that bordered on torture, and his alternative to that had been to sleep with Tony.

Fierce as he can, he tells him;

“You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart.  
This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a terrible privilege.”

Banner shakes his head, ever so slightly, corrects;

“But you can control it.”

“Because I learned how.”

“It's different.”

It isn’t, though, and Tony knows he really does not have the privilege of trying to be the one to make Banner see this, but he has to try. He dismisses the information on the screen between them with an irritated wave of his fingers;

“Hey, I've read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you.”

“So you're saying that the Hulk, the other guy, saved my life?” Banner’s mouth purses, and it isn’t anger in his expression, it’s something bitter and more resolute, that again feels incredibly unfamiliar to Tony. He suspects Banner has earned this expression from years of sacrifice and exhaustion. “That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Save it for what?”

It’s the closest to a direct accusation that Banner has come so far, and Tony feels it, but doesn’t let it shop. Tells him instead;

“I guess we'll find out.”

He hadn’t ever seriously worried about the possibility that Banner could get _angry_ with him over this, angry enough to go green, go big, go _Hulk_ sized.

Now, watching him, he wonders if all the rage that Banner has every right to be feeling hasn’t turned inwards somehow. The self-recrimination, self-loathing, are so palpable around him after their conversation that Tony continues to feel a little wrong-footed, a little unsure of what to say to him.

He suspects that if they’d had the same encounter now, Banner would be a much shrewder man, Tony a much softer mark. But the thought makes his stomach go tight. He would absolutely not want to pay him for it today.

He checks for interest, arousal, and finds both. Checks for the impulse to dominate, to shove Banner face down over the lab table and kick his legs apart, take, and that’s fully intact too. But it’s tempered by a respect and a protectiveness that normally would take the fun out of it, but for the time being just make keeping his focus a little harder.

He’s relieved when Steve and the others return to the lab to distract him from his thoughts, and lets himself lose track of the other scientist while they argue.

The explosion that rocks the helicarrier is enough to take his mind off it for good. He sees Banner fall, hears the sickening crack of what might be a broken bone, and yeah, if the guy shifts after _that_ and not before, then Tony guesses he’s got a pretty tight lid on it.

The devastation the Hulk causes is impressive. He goes through metal like it’s tissue paper, and watching him, Tony realizes that all of the army’s pipe dreams of a room that could eventually contain this creature are absolute fancy. The frustration just builds to Hulk’s momentum, the more confined he feels, the angrier he gets, like some sort of beautiful particle cascade. Tony misses him fall out of the sky, but thinks about the mission reports he’d read on New York and knows that he’ll be fine.

Banner will be back in time for the endgame.

When he is right about that, Tony isn’t surprised, just pleased.

Time to suit up.

\--

When Bruce finally corners him to talk, without anyone hearing, it's behind the Shawarma place. Tony is out to get a breath of air and move past the sick, numb, twisted feeling in his stomach when he feels a hand on his arm, just about jumps out of his skin.

"I said 'hey,'" Bruce says, with some concern, giving him a shrewd look that Tony shrugs off with a wave of his hand. He isn't _damaged,_ he's just had a long day.

"So the other guy is a pretty good catch, huh?"

This is as close as Tony gets to a thank-you, and is obviously pretty transparent, because Bruce just stares at him, with even more calculation in his expression, and just as Tony is about to suggest they do this another time, Banner is backing off, holding his hands out palm-up.

"We can talk later."

It isn't actually what Tony wants, but it might be for the best, because all he can do is nod a numb agreement and go back to leaning against the brick wall. It isn't until Banner has turned around that he suggests;

"Come stay at the tower with me."

Banner freezes, reminds him;

"I'm pretty sure the fact that I've already been to the tower today makes it pretty unlivable, currently."

Which is a very good point. There's no knowing what structural damage has been done to the place. So Tony considers, and suggests instead;

"Then come stay at one of my other homes. I'll put you up better than SHIELD, and no one else will have any idea where you are. Your only hope of really slipping them is moving now."

"That's pretty blatantly manipulative," Bruce points out, crossing his arms, "considering you think I should be staying with them, and considering they could probably track me just about anywhere in the world, particularly since they'll be keeping a close eye on you."

Which is fair, shrewd enough that Tony grins, and tips his head back against the brick, tries one more time.

"Just come stay with me for a bit. We should talk. I want to talk. I can't cajole you properly right now, I'm messing this up, so basically running away before I've had time to give you the proper speech would be fundamentally unsporting."

He doesn't expect _anything,_ but has to try. And miracle of miracles, ever so cautiously, Banner nods his head.

"I should stick around to monitor Thor and Loki's travel by tesseract. They'll need someone on hand who understands what their instruments are telling them."

Tony would be perfectly capable of providing them with that sort of interpretation, of course, but he keeps his mouth shut and grins, reaching back and feeling the brick underneath his fingertips.

"Great. New York is going to _love_ you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude, catching up to IM3. Contains very gratuitous BDSM.

Dealing with Bruce Banner is like dealing with a stray dog. Reach for it, and it scampers, or bites. Put out some food, sit back and let it come to you, and pretty soon it’s pressing a mangy nose up against your hand, or crawling into your bed- the metaphor sort of falls apart here.

Bruce Banner _belongs_ in Tony’s bed, though, and with him here now, he isn’t going to overthink things.

“Green is a weird choice for a safeword, given everything, don’t you think?” Bruce asks, with the sort of dreamy disconnectedness that he typically gets in bed. Tony is more than a little pleased that he’s beginning to know what Bruce is like in bed in general, rather than as a once off thing.

It’s different from last time. For one, this had begun with the kind of desperation that Tony is learning to associate with his having near-death experiences. Poor Pepper, mostly, generally grabs him when he gets back from nearly having his ass blown up or head shot off, but this time the stuff with the Mandarin had been front-page material on every paper on every continent. Thus, two weeks into February, time-delayed to account for whatever ridiculously circuitous trek he took to get back to New York, Bruce turned up. He’d thrown Tony up against the wall with the ‘you’re alive!’ aura that Tony really shouldn’t get off on- he needs to talk to one or both of them about this giving him some sort of kinky Pavlovian, thrill-seeking behaviours- and kissed him for all he was worth.

This had naturally led them to bed, through a first flush of uncomplicated passion, to a rather wonderful here-and-now, with Bruce on his knees, arms bound up behind his back, and Tony _knows_ he does yoga because reverse-prayer isn’t something that normal people hold with ease and pleasure, but Bruce is managing it, blissed out and soft and unharried and just perfect.

Tony scrubs a hand through his hair, which is more grey than before and a little short- he’ll try to coax him into growing out those curls a little later- and attaches another clothespeg to the ladder of them along his flank. Bruce shivers, hard, and Tony smiles to himself as the wooden pieces clack against each other ever so slightly.  
Bruce’s spacey monologue continues.

“When I first started playing, I safeworded far less easily than I do now. You could beat me until my legs went out, I was just fine.” Another clothespeg, another of those shudders. Tony would gag him, except that he knows better than to do anything that would discourage him from sharing. No sudden movements. “It took a long time for me to learn that what I could take wasn’t necessarily what I enjoyed. That I didn’t need to push myself that hard.”

“Mm.” Tony agrees, low and steady, over the soft gasps that follow. He bats each peg in turn, working his way up and down the row of them. “I’d be happy to help you chase that whale one day, but it isn’t what I want from you right now, either.”

A slap to that leg sends a few pegs skittering, makes Bruce cry out happy, cant sideways into Tony, leaning against him with an eager sob, eyes closing. To himself, Tony thinks that it also isn’t entirely that they aren’t playing hard, but rather that this is a different kind of pain than a flogging, and one that gets in under Bruce’s skin a lot more slowly than a beating does, but grabs a different kind of hold of him. Bruce is still gasping, when Tony hits him again.

“This is what I want from you right now. The rest can come later.”

\---

They do get to it. They sit quietly together over tea, while Tony tells him the story from the beginning, while Bruce falls asleep- Jesus, the guy really has been on the run- and then tells it to him over again. Bruce is sympathetic, calmer about it than Pepper was initially, but then, he’s calm about most things.

The rest of the visit he actually spends mostly with her. After he’s assessed that Tony obviously isn’t in any way interested in discussing what Bruce calls “pretty textbook PTSD, actually,” or for that matter his “hitherto unacknowledged raging alcoholism,”- Jesus, he can be a dick when he wants to be- he transfers his attention to Pepper. They have in common, after all, a physical transformation that puts others at risk but results in a certain amount of raw, destructive, harnessable power if the circumstances are right. With his reactor out, they’re the real comic-book style superheroes of the three of them.

It is softly and slowly turning into ‘the three of them,’ too. Tony and Pepper had mostly given up their nonmonogamous ways in the aftermath of his operation. Bruce had been the exception in his return, and after he leaves Tony is privately sure that they will close off again entirely, except for when Banner slips back into their orbit. He sees them one night, heads bowed together, sitting on the couch with a glittering New York skyline for a backdrop, her small hands on Bruce’s broad back.

Tony slips out to give them their privacy, pleased and reaffirmed by the fact that it isn’t just him.

\---

It turns out, Tony was right about Bruce responding very differently to different kinds of pain. Tony doesn’t know if it was because of how strong he’d looked that night, or his comments before, or just remembering hitting him in that hotel room all those years ago, but a few weeks later he finds an excuse to cuff him to the curtain rod- specially reinforced for this purpose- and flog him.

Tony’s shoulders are iron-worker strong, and his floggers are almost universally heavy and full of plenty of _thud,_ and Bruce eats it up like candy. He screams into the crook of his arm and writhes ever so slightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet when it’s especially good and jerking obscenely every once in a while like a few strikes more and he’ll-

“I don’t know how I’m _ever_ going to let you go,” Tony says, quite accidentally, a growl into Bruce’s ear as he grabs him by the hair and drags his head back, provoking a guttural scream. He knows better than to talk relationship stuff during a scene, so he corrects, quickly, before Bruce can clue in; “I’m going to keep you tied up to this rod, right here, and beat you black and blue whenever the mood takes me, and I bet you wouldn’t even want to stop me.”

That’s safer, but probably wasn’t necessary. Rather than in one of his hyper-lucid subspaces, today Bruce seems to have lost any and all language comprehension, is lost in sensation, squirming back against him. On the topic of safewords, it doesn’t take a genius to see that Bruce wouldn’t be able to muster one right now come hell or high water, so Tony begins the process of easing him on down. 

They can use this scene as a measuring stick. Later on, when he can speak again, Bruce can let him know ‘too hard,’ or ‘next time, harder,’ but for the time being, Tony thinks better safe than sorry.

It’s amazing how much a few years can change you.

\---

Bruce doesn’t stay. None of them expected him to. Some troop movements upstate hit the news and he’s gone without a trace the next morning, with a goodbye note on the counter that gives a PO Box address somewhere so far north that Pepper frets for hours about whether he’ll take the time to buy proper winter boots and a jacket.

He’ll be back, Tony reasons. It’ll work out.

But yeah, it certainly doesn’t make him less inclined to get himself publically and loudly almost-killed, that’s for sure. He won’t do anything to track him down, because he is privately very sure about that stray dog metaphor...

Even though that may just be his hindbrain trying to come up with a good excuse to get Bruce Banner into a collar.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter. A complete lack of porn and overdose of philosophy. The elephant in the room being addressed, ad nauseum. What I was interested in trying to capture in this one was the kind of... extreme, black-belt communication you typically find in poly relationships, particularly with the kind of politically conscious academic angle that I've found among intellectual polyamorists in particular. While, of course, still being Bruce and Tony.

Bruce calls one day, from Alaska, of all the area codes. Tony is in the lab, up to his shoulder in one of the heavy utility automated suits, grease stained from neck to knee and blowing absently to try to get at an itch on the side of his face when Jarvis pipes Bruce through, unceremoniously.

“Here’s the thing.” Bruce says, it sounds like he’s driving through a snowstorm, but it’s obviously him, if only because no one else has the override on this line. “I don’t want to yell at you for the way you treat sex workers, because I know that you no longer do, but there’s also some stuff I need to say to you before I’m going to be able to trust you completely.”

Tony stops dead, before extricating himself from the heavy equipment. A few seconds of silence, and he responds with “I’m listening,” at the exact same moment as Bruce says “This connection is terrible,” the conversational equivalent of meeting head on and both stepping aside in the same direction.

More silence, then Bruce goes next;

“What you did wasn’t okay, because you didn’t spare me the same negotiation you would have a normal play partner. You assumed it would be fine, and you’re very intuitive and I’m very masochistic, but you should have asked if I wanted it before just assuming you could buy it from me. It also really still bothers me that you didn’t know I was a masochist, because you did know I was desperate- if I hadn’t been... I mean, I don’t know. Maybe you saw it in me, I really hope you did, but I needed the money so badly that night that if you had trampled my boundaries and limits, I would have squared my jaw and _taken_ it to get more cash.”

Half a decade, no, closer to an actual decade later, Tony can’t honestly remember if he’d known or not, thought or not. He’s a smart enough man to know that it doesn’t necessarily matter, the question isn’t how he’d necessarily treated Bruce, it’s how he’d treated the dozen some _other_ professionals he’d been with in those years. Had he had full and enthusiastic consent from every single one of them?

On the same train of thought, apparently, Bruce pushes on.

“I did a lot of reading, after- that- to reconcile the choice I’d made with you. If this sounds academic, you’ll have to forgive me, because that’s how I’m choosing to approach this, but what it comes down to in a lot of ways is your belief in the capacity for freedom in the context of inequality. You have to look at this all as a spectrum. On the one end is a purely free-choice model where every single sex worker makes a conscious choice that this is a good way for them to make money in a relatively short period of time. They are professionals, in control of their bodies, sex is for the most part pleasurable, they are adults and their choices deserve to be respected. The big problem with that model is it doesn’t explain why so many women and gay men are sex workers. If this whole equation was perfectly equal and not influenced by gender dynamics or systematic barriers in the slightest, we wouldn’t see the terrible things we do in terms of disproportionate representation of various groups in the trade. Obviously trafficking and children are an exception to this that we can leave out of the conversation- in this model those activities would be criminalized not for the transactional element but rather on their face. I mean, kidnapping, sexual assault, and age of consent violations-“

“Bruce.” Says Tony, a little strangled, but he’s straying badly and Tony _needs_ not to interrupt him, but can hear him veering into a philosophical and legalistic ditch, which he doesn’t have the patience for right now.

“Sorry.” He sounds more nervous now. Tony thinks he can hear the car pulling over, and wonders for an insane moment whether or not he’s using a hands free device and whether or not he has snow tires on the car. Both of them are very capable of veering. “As I was saying, that represents the one end of the spectrum. At the other end, you have a sort of Dworkin-scenario of a person- I’ll go ahead and say a woman, actually, forced into prostitution because of a series of injustices and blocked opportunities. Maybe violence in the home and being forced to leave it early. Maybe a lack of education, or a spousal dynamic that kept her out of the work force. Careers closed off because of these barriers, an inadequate welfare and childcare system, maybe drug addiction and health issues. She needs money, she can’t get it any other way, not quickly or safely enough, a predatory pimp is putting pressure on her to go this route, so even though she may make a choice to go out onto the streets, you see, it isn’t really a choice at all, because circumstances, misogyny, classism, so on- they’re all holding a gun to her head. In this model, women who say they’re enjoying and benefiting from sex work are typically construed as just telling themselves they’re making a choice as a sort of defence mechanism. The huge flaw in this model, obviously, is that’s completely condescending and denies a whole bunch of people any agency in terms of their ability to make choices. I don’t know if you’ve heard the ‘money does not equal consent’ rhetoric, but that’s where that comes from.”

Tony hadn’t actually known all of this. Bits and pieces, certainly, but he does him the courtesy of listening through.

“Most people agree the truth lies somewhere on a spectrum between these two poles, and individual workers negotiate choice and pressure in complicated ways every day. There are people who are very empowered, but take the odd bad client and just don’t enjoy that appointment. They’re pretty consenting, still, of course. There are people who enjoyed it at first, but then reach a stage where they want to exit the field and feel trapped- how consenting are they? Is that person more or less consenting based on whether or not they’re systematically disadvantaged- me, on that corner where you met me, for example, compared to a single mother of three, we face very different pressures. Obviously both of us are capable of making choices, but it’s just so _complicated._ On the one hand, in some ways it’s far _more_ ethical to give the income to her, but on the other she may be much more coerced. And she’s a fictional cliché, actual people are way more complicated than this and shift wildly on the day to day. Then there are people who have financial pressure, but maybe other choices available, except they can make the money faster and better through sex work, even if it’s a little risky and not necessarily pleasant. In that respect, sex work can be outright empowering, taking you quickly and comparatively cleanly away from the drudgery of the really soul-crushing kinds of work. I mean, I can tell you, some of the work I did in Rio was far more dangerous, upsetting and degrading than what I did with you.”

That sentence was clearly meant to carry on, but sort of trails off there, probably because of the implications packed in it. It’s comforting, sort of, but also links the things Bruce and Tony did together to this conversation, and to some extent, to degradation, and Tony sure can’t blame him for stammering to a halt just there.

“...so I think we make a mistake when we talk about sex work as being inherently different or more wrong than other low-level forms of employment. Probably influenced by the cultural baggage we have around chastity and value. But what that argument circles us back to, inherently, is that _capitalism_ is inherently degrading, and.” He’s doing it again, going highly philosophical, but this time catches himself, redirects. “I could explain that but it’d take too long and make me sound like I was twenty two again and getting stoned in the stockroom of an anarchist bookstore.”

This forces a small laugh out of Tony, entirely unbidden, which is exactly what Bruce wanted, so he finds he doesn’t mind.

“Right. So most people who visit sex workers responsibly and respectfully, yourself included, try to make an assessment on some level to think about what that choice looks like. If I had been visibly drug addicted and asking for twenty bucks I don’t think you would have picked me up off that curb. I know the kind of escorts you’re normally associated with, and they’re incredibly powerful in terms of being able to be their own advocates in their relationships with their clients. If you want to go back to a power-based critical macro level analysis there are important questions to be asked about who has access to those kinds of safer, off-street levels of sex work, but- I want to keep on track here.

“I’m not angry that you saw prostitutes. I don’t like what happened between you and me, because I don’t think you spent enough time thinking about and making sure I had a choice in what we were doing. I approve of sex work in general, but you were too cavalier about how you did that.”

And that, Tony hopes, is the long and short of it. He finds himself sitting down against the foot of his machine, wiping absently at his hand with a rag, processing this. Bruce asks, a few seconds later, raggedly;

“Please tell me the call hasn’t dropped?”

“Still here.” Tony says, with another short chuckle, though much more mirthlessly this time.

“Well?”

“Well? Bruce- I’m still thinking of what to say.” And, because first and foremost, this is what he needs to get out; “You’re right, of course.”

“You’re not angry?”

In that voice, Tony hears, remembers forcibly, that Bruce is in many ways, these days, his _submissive,_ and right now despite that is calling him out head on. Jesus, he’s the bravest man Tony knows.

“No, Bruce, of course I’m not angry. It needed to be said. I’m serious about you, and I don’t know how it would have been possible to build something real without going into all this. I’m glad we’re doing it, even though it’s uncomfortable.”

He hears, he swears, the anxiety leaving him in the tiny sigh that comes down the line. Bruce doesn’t answer. It’s Tony’s turn to talk, and then some. So he starts out, slow and uncertain, but trying;

“I’m not proud of the man I used to be, or a lot of the choices I made back then. I had some really fucked up ideas- I was more than a little bit of a bully.”

The slowish pace he manages to get this out with is a direct effect of Bruce’s good influence. Pepper rails just as quickly as Tony does, when she’s stressed, and years together have trained both of them to speak at a frantic speed and frequently overtop of one another when they discuss or argue. Bruce won’t stand for it, and the collective household pace has diminished measuredly over the months they’ve been doing this triad thing, even just with Bruce’s short visits.

“I’m sorry. For fucking around with you, for thinking it was funny. I never would have done it if I’d known who you were.”

“That’s the problem exactly, though, isn’t it?” Bruce interjects, steadfastly, refusing to let his point slip away. “It shouldn’t be about that. It isn’t an _oddity_ that your sex worker turned out to be a human being, Tony, you just have a lot of trouble seeing value in people who aren’t... you know, MENSA members.”

That stings, and he wants to defend himself, snap back about the value of the lives he’s saved in the suit, but Bruce cuts him off before he can.

“I’m not talking about life and death, I’m talking about personal dignity. You _mortify_ normal people for kicks.”

And yes. Yes, he had. Numb, and a little defeated, he answers;

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to stop.”

“I forgive you.” Bruce says, seriously, and then- Tony knows him too well, now, it’s frightening- he hears the smile come back in his voice, the quiet serenity returning. “Just maybe don’t interact with a sex worker again until you’ve, you know, done a full lit review. I can forward you my works cited if you’d like.”

And, because gorgeous, soft, lovely Bruce is also intensely empathetic, and knows when Tony is speechless, crushed, quiet, he adds without further prompting;

“You didn’t hurt me. You could have, which is why I’m bringing it up, but you didn’t. I was attracted to you, and I was into what we did. I believe you’re a good man, and I believe you picked up on my interest and arousal, or I wouldn’t be here. What happened back then- it was good for me. You know me, Tony, I’m kinky as hell- I was _into_ it, and into you, and I liked the power of you not knowing me. I loved it, and it was good. No part of me is saying it wasn’t, just that you have to check first, you have to be more careful, and more kind to people. Tony. It’ll be okay.”

Tony puts his head on his knees as the world goes dark around the edges, as he wars with relatively equal measures of relief and panic. Bruce, gorgeous, sensitive, patient Bruce, stays on the line with him and talks to him softly, not about prostitution or theory or his raging PTSD and alcoholism, but rather esoteric bits of information about the Alaskan wildlife and various explorations and instances of cannibalism in the area. God, he can be weird sometimes, Tony thinks, as he gradually re-establishes his emotional footing.

“I do forgive you.” Bruce says at the end of the call, really sincerely. “And I’m going to be able to come for a visit in a couple of weeks, if you’ll have me?”

“As soon as you can,” Tony answers, exhausted but completely serious, “and for as long as you can.”

Bruce smiles- Tony knows he’s smiling- and hangs up the line.

The big problem with becoming an adult in your late forties for the very first time, is the sheer amount of stupid teenaged mistakes you have to cope with and reconcile. Tony’s sponsor had pointed out a few weeks back, rightly so, that he’d been in that developmental stage about ten times as long as the general population, and without ever really having anyone to effectively establish boundaries or do any interpersonal damage control. Naturally, Tony’s radius of destruction had been relatively large, and he had a comparatively high amount of mortification and guilt to process all at once, all tied up with the feeling that people are probably going to die because of him.

He has Jarvis place the call, greets her blithely;

“Hey. Want to go out for a drink?”

She’s used to him, and laughs, arranges to meet him later for a cup of coffee.

Things do eventually turn out all right, after all.


End file.
